


Wordsmithy

by HelloAfternoon



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Awkward Romance, Late Night Conversations, Love Confessions, M/M, X-Wing(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-15
Updated: 2016-07-15
Packaged: 2018-07-19 18:48:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7373341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HelloAfternoon/pseuds/HelloAfternoon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Finn and Poe talk.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wordsmithy

“Are you sure?” Finn asks, for the fifth time, crawling into the cockpit of Poe’s X-wing. “I don’t think I’m supposed to-”

“It’s _my_ ship, Finn, you’re allowed in,” Poe snorts, grabbing one of Finn’s belt loops and throwing him inside.

“I just don’t know if the general would-”

“The general wouldn’t care. You act like everyone here is supposed to be as suspicious of you as you are.”

Finn just looks perplexed, as if he hadn’t really considered that, and then settles into the cockpit. It’s a small, cramped space filled mostly with little grey buttons and dials, and Finn seems overwhelmed the very instant his ass hits the battered seat.

“It’s not gonna bite,” Poe says, secretly delighted, wanting desperately for Finn to appreciate this ship the way he does. He has a mission tonight. He wants to talk.

“It’s, um,” Finn says, brows furrowed, “it’s a ship.”

“It’s more than a ship,” Poe says in that way he does when he’s about to launch into a defensive speech about his ship, which is often. “It’s my home, it’s a lifeline, it’s a weapon. Look at her, Finn! She’s like-”

“-a vessel that you pilot,” Finn finishes, giving Poe a look like he’s being stupid. “A metal cage that you sit in.”

Poe frowns deeply and thoughtfully. “You like flying, don’t you?”

Finn shrugs. “Didn’t really get to very much,” he says. “I was cargo, not a pilot. If I flew, it was ‘cause I was packed in a metal crate with a bunch of other ‘troopers so I could get thrown on the ground of some planet I’d never heard of.”

“But flying is so much more than that!” Poe says, sounding genuinely exasperated, his shoulders all saggy and his lower lip popped out in a monster of a pout. This isn't going _precisely_ how he'd hoped, but few things ever do.

Finn smiles, sympathetic, but doesn’t seem to understand. “I guess. I mean, if you love it so much, it must really be something, right? You're the ace pilot, not me,” he says.

But that isn’t really good enough for Poe, not at all. He doesn’t want Finn to _guess_ , he wants him to _understand_ ; even if he doesn't LIKE it, Poe wants him to UNDERSTAND it. Poe rolls over to lie on his back on the nose of his ship, sprawled out over it as if it were an exceptional mattress and not sheet metal.

“Are you mad at me or something?” Finn finally asks.

“What?” Poe asks, staring up at the roof of the hangar. “No, no. I just…”

He just what? Thought this would be different? That Finn would understand?

He shouldn't have. Really, there’s no reason for Finn to have ANY good memories or feelings associated with flying, except-

Poe’s eyes brighten with dawning realization and he sits up quickly, turning to Look at Finn, who is playing with the inert controls of Poe’s ship and looks CAUGHT when Poe looks at him. Finn jerks his hands away quickly and tucks them into his lap.

“Finn, remember when we got off Starkiller? When we crashed on Jakku?”

Finn frowns and looks at the controls again, his large, dark eyes wild with a sort of curious intelligence, searching the memory up and down. “Yes,” he says, rather darkly. “I remember. I thought you were dead.”

Well, good work, Dameron. You’re gonna make him cry next, aren’t you?

Poe soldiers on.

“When we were in that TIE together, when we were escaping, that felt good, right?”

Finn looks up at him again. He sucks his lower lip into his mouth, chews it, and then lets it go again. “I guess. I mean, it all happened so fast, and then everything got terrible so much faster,” he murmurs. “I didn’t think too hard about that part. It felt good to escape.”

“How did it feel?” Poe inquires excitedly. “Did your heart race? Did you feel lighter than air?”

“I felt,” Finn starts slowly, and then shrugs. “Sweaty and terrified. Oh, you know, that bodysuit we wear under our uniforms, it’s-it gets hot under there, so…”

“Finn, I’m asking about your emotions, not your sweat,” Poe jokes. Finn smiles a little, subdued and bashful.

“I dunno. I guess I was happy. Really scared, but happy. Everything was going so fast. I felt…” he gets contemplative again, bunching his shoulders and scrunching his eyebrows together. “...Really sure of something, you know? For the first time in my life, I was _completely sure,_ ” he continues, “even though I shouldn't have been. There was no way I could feel like that, but I did.”

“Sure about what?” Poe asks, interested. Finn doesn’t talk much about anything before he met Rey, not even with Poe. He says he hashes it out with his therapist, but Poe isn’t exactly privy to those conversations, and it’s uncommon that Finn wants to talk about himself. It's rare, and Poe feels a little honored; even if this isn't going as he planned, this easy, intimate conversation that flits from topic to topic makes him feel like he has a special place in Finn's life, even if he doesn't know everything about him.

“I don’t know, it's stupid,” Finn denies. “I guess I just felt like...I was being _me_. I was doing something _I_ wanted to do, something I _knew_ I wanted to do. You don’t understand, Poe,” he says, sounding suddenly distraught in a way that makes his voice quaver, “we don’t GET that. You all, you get to be yourselves your whole lives. When you’re a 'trooper, you never stop trying to be somebody who isn’t you, not from the moment they get their hands on you. You never find out who you are, you never grow up. Then you get out, you-you hit the surface of Jakku, and...” he swallows. “You don’t know who you are. Except you _do_ , all of a damn sudden. You’re the one who got away. That was a choice you made, and you know that about yourself, at least. You _know_ that.”

Poe is quietly reverent for a moment, fingers wound together, lying on his belly on the X-wing and staring at Finn attentively, eyes open and wide, a curl of dark hair flipped over his forehead. “You mean that?” he asks.

Finn nods. “It’s hard to put yourself together after a lifetime of being so…disconnected from who you are,” Finn admits carefully. “It’s hard to know if who I am is a lie or not. I don't even know my own likes and dislikes, how wild is that?”

“Pretty wild,” Poe says, although the words sound completely inadequate even as they’re leaving his mouth. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs, and he knows the moment he says it that nothing he can say can fix this. There’s nothing he can do and it makes him feel small. He knows it's rather arrogant of him to assume that he could do anything, but Poe hates feeling powerless, especially when he thinks that someone might-in any small, quiet way-need him.

“I feel like everyone here has a soul except me,” Finn says, and he says it with such ringing clarity that it breaks Poe’s heart, just a little, or maybe just a lot. He feels the breath rush out of his chest all at once, feels that same warm clamp over his heart like he’s trying to strangle himself.

“You have a soul, Finn,” he says, trying to sound confident, hoping he sounds sure. “You have a good soul.”

“Not like you guys, though,” Finn says. “I’m an imitation person. I’m just faking it and trying to figure things out before anybody notices that I’m messed up.”

“That’s what we’re _all_ doing, Finn,” Poe insists. Finn casts a doubtful look his way. “You’re...you’re good, you’re just...this is all…” he sighs, scrubbing his hands through his hair. “This is really unfair.”

“What do you mean?” Finn asks.

“It unfair that this happened, that you...Finn, you’re so damn _good_ on the inside that even years of brainwashing by the First Order couldn’t make you bad,” Poe says. He scoffs, but it’s a cold, tired little sound.

Poe wants desperately to wax poetic and make some clever peach-pit metaphor about who Finn is, but it’s hard to condense that much of an amazing person into something coherent. Poe struggles for a moment, trying to think of a way to tell Finn what he thinks of him. It’s a complicated picture to paint, even in his head; Finn is layers upon layers of complicated, wonderful person, flaws and all.

Unfortunately, Poe is not a poet, and Finn is a not a painting. But if he were, he’d be a mural, and Poe would never be able to do him justice.

Finn stares at him for a moment, and then looks away, gazing into the floor of the cockpit, the dingy metal a bit like a cheese grater for a pilot’s boots. His eyes comb over it like he's looking for something.

“I don’t deserve that. Don’t say that.”

“Sometimes I want to punch you for shit talking yourself,” Poe says flatly, “because I can’t stand the thought of anyone being an asshole to you. But it’s _you_ being an asshole to you, so I can't do anything.”

“Please don’t punch me,” Finn says. He’s laughing, at least.

“You could probably beat the fuck outta me anyway,” Poe says, arms crossed in front of him, chin on his forearms, belly made cold by the metal of his ship. “I’m a string bean with a wad of exceptional hair on the end.”

“The hair _is_ exceptional," Finn agrees amicably, nodding.

“When Rey gets back, do you think she’ll let you in on any Jedi secrets?” Poe asks.

Finn shrugs. “Probably not. I mean, Rey’s amazing, and I’m just, y’know, a grunt.”

It’s quiet for a moment, the only sound the dull, metallic guts of the base churning and insects singing. Poe kicks his feet and looks at Finn. He wonders if he'll ever be able to stick to a script.

“Finn, do you mind if I say something?”

“When has that ever stopped you?” Finn says lightly, leaning back in the seat with his arms crossed.

“You...you seem to always think that you’re somehow behind the curve, y’know?” Poe says slowly, trying hard to formulate his words before he says them and not just prattle heedlessly like he always does. He has to be deliberate and accurate on this. “Like there’s some kinda big picture you're missing that everybody else can see, like there’s some universal truth we all know that you aren’t in on because you missed a few classes at the school of regular life, but…” Poe stops, and then sighs.

Finn watches him with wide, curious eyes from the cockpit of Poe’s most favorite ship.

“But...that’s not how it is, Finn,” Poe tries to say, and Finn gives him a hard, dismissive look. “No, I’m serious! Finn, your experiences...they’re different. There’s a lot you don’t know, but it’s not like any of us has it all figured out.” Poe says, gesturing with his hands and frustrated with his own vocabulary. “You aren’t LESS. You’re different, not incomplete. Nobody knows what they’re doing! We’re all just a bunch of sad, stumbling animals, waddlin’ around and trying to pretend we have a destination in mind.”

Finn is staring at him, expression open and bare, and Poe’s heart swells and thuds at the way Finn is listening to him, the way they’re communicating, the way he hopes he can help even just a little.

“You aren’t behind the curve. Nobody knows what they’re doing. This is war, Finn, and we’re all just runnin’ around like chickens with our heads cut off, tryin’ to figure out who we are and how to be good people and what the right thing to do is. It’s not just you. You ARE like the rest of us,” Poe insists. “That’s just what it’s like bein’ human, buddy. You never figure it out, you just get better at hiding what you don’t know and accepting what you can’t change.”

“But you know who you are,” Finn says, ever the contrarian. “You’re so sure of everything all the time, Poe.”

Poe could almost laugh, or maybe cry, because of _course_ Finn sees him that way. “No, no, buddy, I’m-I’m just as confused as everybody else,” he says weakly. “There are a few things I know for sure, like that I’m a good pilot, and I love my family, and this is a cause I believe in, but-do you think I’m sure about everything I do? I'm never sure about anything! I'm just-I'm better at BEING unsure than a lot of people. Pilots have to be that way.”

Finn pauses, considering.

“I’m not _sure._ I’m always fallin’ apart at the seams, wishing I was back at home, or that I could just go sit in my Mom’s lap and stop shooting at people.”

Finn looks up at him from under dark eyelashes and chews his lower lip. “You’re a mama’s boy, huh?”

Poe laughs, exasperated and nakedly emotional. “Yeah, through and through.”

Finn leans forward and puts his hands back on the controls, holding them carefully and firmly. Poe watches his favorite person touch his favorite ship like a person who has just introduced their two best friends to each other and is hoping they will get along. He'd thought he'd need his ship's blessing, somehow.

“You wanna know somethin’ funny?” Poe asks, heart doing a little pitter-patter jig in his chest.

“Yeah, shoot,” Finn says, looking back at him.

“Talk about unsure…” Poe mutters. “I brought you out here, tryin’ to figure out how best to tell you how I felt, or just even how to say it,” Poe murmurs, lying on his stomach, the cold from the metal cooling his body in the humid night air. “I’m just sittin’ here tryin’ to figure out how best to tell you how amazing you are, or...how I see you, but I can’t even do it. And maybe me not being able to do it is just a landmark of my shortcomings, or maybe it’s just because you’re not the the kinda person who can be described in a sentence or a book or an,” Poe inhales and exhales again, “entire fuckin’ _trilogy. _Maybe if I was a little smarter, I could make it happen. I describe sunsets as ‘pink’ and maybe that’s just that.”__

Poe chances a look at Finn, who is leaning back in his seat away from Poe, eyes wide and expectant.

“So when I tell you that you’re _wonderful_ and I _love_ you, it’s like me sayin’ a sunset is pink,” Poe breathes it out like he’s at confession. “Cause there ain’t a sunset out there that’s just pink, buddy, but there’s a million poems by a million people that can do it better justice than me.”

After a long series of intimate, wandering conversations, Poe Dameron manages to get to the point. 

"So that's it," Poe says. "I love you." 

Finn stares hard at him, eyebrows furrowed, lips slack, his grip on the console lessening by the second, his shoulders wilting helplessly. He’s turned toward Poe like a blooming sunflower and Poe feels honored, like he always does, that Finn could ever look at a guy like _him_ with _trust_ like that.

“I dunno about sunsets or anything. That was pretty good, though,” he rasps out, “as far as poetry goes.” Finn stills for a moment and then shudders slightly. "And I guess I like flying. It feels pretty good right now."

Then Finn sits up and leans out of the cockpit, his hand circling behind Poe’s neck, blunt fingers twisting into the dark curls of hair there, and kisses him on the mouth.

**Author's Note:**

> well look ive churned out another one of these


End file.
